


You go to heaven (once you've been to hell)

by muppetstiefel



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Child Neglect, Courfeyrac being Courfeyrac, F/F, Foster Care, Found Family, Gangs, Happy Ending, Homelessness, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, It's Not Mentioned But It's Important You Know, Korean Montparnasse, Latino Feuilly, M/M, Skipping Class, Trans Montparnasse, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-06 16:51:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19066705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muppetstiefel/pseuds/muppetstiefel
Summary: "And then there’s the control. The way fate forces you into a box, into a person. Into decisions, and responsibility, and relationships. And Feuilly has dealt with enough control in his lifetime without being governed by a supernatural force."Or, the story of Feuilly's childhood and why he refuses to accept the idea of fate.





	1. Take My Heart and Take My Pain

Feuilly isn’t a big believer in fate.

Not in the way his friends seem to be. Musichetta believes everyone is guided through life by a divine force, that there is only a small amount of free will. Cosette’s mantra is ‘everything happens for a reason’. Feuilly would normally scoff at that but even he can accept that Cosette has been through some bad shit and is a tad scary when she fixes you with that cold, dead stare.

Courfeyrac and Jehan discuss soulmates as though people have no decision in who they fall in love with. Courfeyrac seems to have a new soulmate every week, but Feuilly doesn’t mention it.

Even Enjolras goes on about his Purpose. it seems the topic of fate is inescapable in their little cocoon of friendship, and everywhere Feuilly turns he is greeted by the idea of destiny. It’s scary, he thinks. The idea that your life was mapped out before you even opened your eyes.

No, Feuilly doesn’t believe in fate. Refuses to, in fact. If fate exists, it means he was destined to be abandoned. Destined to loneliness. And really, he’d rather not think of that. He doesn’t want to be destined for anything, thank you very much. Not loneliness, not lifestyle, and certainly not love. He could live without the idea of love if everyone else would just let him.

It’s not even that he doesn’t believe in fate, more that he can’t stand the idea of it. whenever he thinks of it he feels like he’s choking, drowning under the weight of what he is and what he has to be.

And then there’s the control. The way fate forces you into a box, into a person. Into decisions, and responsibility, and relationships. And Feuilly has dealt with enough control in his lifetime without being governed by a supernatural force.

 

* * *

 

 

At age five, he doesn’t know the feeling of freedom. His life is regulated, trapped within the four walls of their family bedsit.

There’s a large bed in the centre of the room, covered in a mosaic of mishmashed sheets. The stove sits in the corner where it collects grease, next to the fridge-freezer, with a door hanging from its hinges. His Abuela lives in the opposite corner, her ‘house’ cornered off by a white curtain.

He plays in the centre of the room. brushes his teeth by the window. Sleeps at the foot of the bed.

The air in the bedsit is always close, clinging to his skin. He plays with his brothers in his vest and pants and watches the kids play in the park directly below his building.

He’s not allowed out. His mamma goes out. Sometimes, his Abuela walks him to the bathroom down the hall and scrubs at his skin with the soapy water until it stings. Once, he managed to sneak out when his mamma wasn’t looking and he made it all the way to the third stairwell. But he’s not allowed out. Still, he can deal with the room, with his brothers and his Abuela and his cardboard rocket ship.

It’s when his papa is home that the room becomes stifling. Mamma never looks happy to see him. There are raised voices when they think Isaac is asleep, voices that cut grooves into his skin and leave marks. They leave marks on his Mamma too. Angry, red and black, on her arms and her face.

And they are banished behind his Abuela’s curtain in the day time, hidden from sight.

From behind there, Isaac can only make out shadows. Tall, looming shadows, black and distorted behind the curtain, which rustles sometimes. He watches the men through the gaps, observes the silhouette of their guns, smooth and hard in their hands.

One night, his Papa drags him out from behind the curtain and into the semi-circle of men. He sits on his Papa’s knee and watches, eyes flitting from the men, to his mother, and back again. they talk, play cards and laugh, loud and obscene. Isaac doesn’t follow the conversation.

He falls half-asleep in his Papa’s lap. The men stop laughing. Some leave. A few stay, and they talk to his Papa in hushed voices, dark tones lulling him further into unconsciousness.

His Papa never stays long. And soon it is just them left: his Mamma, his Abuela and his brothers.

Isaac always watches his Papa go from the window.

His Papa never looks back.

One time Isaac wakes up to him leaving in the middle of the night. He is filling is bag with clothes, and food, rooting around under the mattress for the rest of his belongings. Isaac rubs at his eyes and sits up, staring curiously.

His Papa just raises a finger to his lips, then whispers, “Go back to sleep, little one. I’ll be right back.”

The next time he awakes, it’s to a beam of light, blinding him. He rubs at his eyes, ears adjusting slowly, hesitantly, to the noise around him. People are yelling, someone is crying, and the room is packed with people. The beam of light belongs to a woman. She sees him squinting and apologetically switches it off. She’s asking him something, or telling him something, but Isaac doesn’t know what because he’s not listening to her. His eyes dart around the room. but all he can see is his brothers, wrapped in blankets, and people he doesn’t know.

“Mamma?” his voice is hoarse, halting, but he keeps crying out for her. He pulls himself off the bed, weaving through the legs of people, each time screaming out for his “Mamma!”

He cries out for her until he can’t cry anymore.

He cries out for her as he’s wrapped in his own blanket. As he’s carried down the flights of stairs. As he’s greeted with the cold air of the formidable Outside.

As he’s tucked into a bed that is not his own, in a room by himself.

He doesn’t stop crying out for her until he’s forgotten what she looked like.

Until he can’t remember her voice. Or her name.

 

* * *

 

 

Isaac spends the next few years traipsing between different care homes.

It’s scary to him, how little his life changes, out of the bedsit. The control levels don’t seem to alter. He’s still told when to eat, when to study, what to wear. The only difference is he does it all virtually alone- not with his Mamma, or his Abuela or his brothers. Just him.

He doesn’t make friends easily. He’s not used to talking, just observing, and so he doesn’t really know how to master communications. His brothers were only babies, and never did much talking. He keeps fusing French and Spanish and Polish, so no one really knows what he’s saying anyways. And even if he did want to make friends, he has nothing to talk about. Everyone else in the home has a life that extends past the four walls and their family.

So instead, he spends most of the time locked in his own room, teaching himself to distinguish between the three languages that stir in his head.

He starts school. He’s two years too late so at the age of seven he finds himself stuck among four years old. But it’s okay, because he’s small and doesn’t know how to read or write anyways. At lunch time he eats alone, or doesn’t eat. Quite quickly he discovers a gap in the fences and uses it to give himself a bit of an escape. Sometimes, he lets himself out and doesn’t go back, just wanders the city until his feet get tired and the sky blackens and a car with flashing lights come to find him.

It’s a lot of hard work to find out anything about his family.

He discovers that the two babies have new families, but the woman won’t tell him who they are. He hurls her potted plant at the wall, but she still doesn’t tell him.

And there is nothing on his Mamma, who seems to have vanished into thin air. The woman looks like she wants to cry when he asks about her, so he doesn’t push it anymore.

His Abuela still visits him, once a month. She holds him to her chest as he cries and cries, and then they walk around the grounds hand in hand. She doesn’t talk much, but then neither does he. They just hold onto each other and hope to never let go.

They always let go about an hour later.

And then there’s his Papa. Isaac doesn’t ask about him.

He’s not even sure he wants to know. But some older kids corner him after dinner one day and confront him.

“You’re Federico Feuilly’s kid, right?” Isaac just shrugs. He’d heard the name Feuilly a few times, mainly in whispered conversations, but he’d never connected it to his Papa. Or to himself. So after a while, he nods.

 

After a few months, things pretty much fall into a routine for him.

He spends a few months in the home, dodging the older kids and locking himself away in his room. then, he’s shipped out to a foster family. The entire process involves packing up all his belongings, saying goodbye to the home and transferring schools.

It never lasts. They always send him back, with some sort of rejection note.

Too quiet. Too disobedient. Always sneaking out. Violent.

Always Too Much Effort.

Sometimes he’s shipped back to the same home, and things slip back into normal routine. Sometimes, it’s a new home, with new faces and new escape routes to learn. He changes school as well, more times than he can count. He’d guess about twenty-three by his eleventh birthday.

 

Shortly after his eleventh birthday, his Abuela dies.

His social worker drives him to the funeral, stands next to him as the crowds of people gather in the church. There are so many people there. Isaac didn’t know she knew so many people. He looks around for his Mamma, but he can’t see her among all the faces. He’s not sure he would recognise her anyway.

There’s a boy, a little younger than Isaac, sat on the front row. He’s wedged between a mum and a dad, and he’s holding their hands and crying. Isaac wonders if that could be his brother, thinks about what he would say if it was. He comes up empty.

He doesn’t cry. Not at the service. Not in the car home. Even in his room, he can’t make himself cry. He hates himself for that.

 

It’s at his eighteenth home that he meets Enjolras.

Enjolras, who’s two years younger than him.

Enjolras, who follows him everywhere.

Enjolras, whose mother just died.

Enjolras, who says he never cries.

Enjolras, who Isaac can hear sobbing at night.

He is tall for his age, passionate and fiery and terrifying in his own respect. At first, Isaac isn’t keen on him, but the kid doesn’t let up.

Its good, Isaac thinks, for him to finally have a friend. For him to talk to someone other than just his social worker.

 

He’s so used to seeing his social worker disappointed, it’s weird that he finds her smiling. She tells him of a family, just outside of town looking to foster, and maybe adopt. At the age of twelve and with a growing criminal record, he can’t see himself as anyone’s first choice. But she insists, so he begrudgingly agrees.

Saying goodbye to Enjolras is hard. He holds onto him tightly, arms wrapped around the older boys neck.

“Hey,” Isaac whispers gently, pulling away to meet his eye, “I’m not leaving forever. Knowing me I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Enjolras laughs, but still locks their pinkies together, and solemnly asks, “Promise you’ll stay in touch?”

“I promise.”

 

* * *

 

 

For a little while, Isaac slides into a normal life.

It takes a few months, of course, for him to actually settle. At first, he loathes the level of control they seem to have over him. The second night he stays out passed their enforced curfew and arrives back at their house to a parade of police cars and his foster mother, Betty, crying at the kitchen table. She yells at him for what seems like hours, berates him and scolds him whilst his foster father, Don, just watches on silently, arms folded across his chest.

He’s sure they’re just going to ship him back to the home, so he braces himself and starts repacking his bags- not that he ever really unpacked them in the first place.

But then Don is there, with two cups of tea and he sits carefully on the end of Isaac’s bed.

“She doesn’t mean to yell,” he explains. Isaac is pretty sure it’s the first time he’s heard him talk since arriving. “She’s just got a lot on her plate. We’ve never really done this before.”

Isaac stands opposite him, guarded, watching his every move. “What, you never had your own kids?”

“Oh, no, we did,” Don chuckles, sipping his tea, “they just weren’t this much trouble.”

Isaac smiles at that.

 

From then, he and Don form a sort of alliance. He still sneaks out, still skips school, still refuses to take of his hood. And Betty still cries and yells (Isaac is convinced she doesn’t really like him).

But Don is always there to bridge the gap, smooth over the cracks and pull them together like a family.

Don teaches him to shave.

He takes him to football games.

He introduces him to their family friends.

And slowly, very slowly, his life begins to follow a normal pattern.

Don and Betty transfer him to the local grammar school, and he stops cutting class and starts putting in his work. They take him shopping on Saturdays and he plays football with his new friends and to an outsider, they look like a normal family.

Isaac does everything he can to cut himself off from his old life. He refuses to meet with his social worker. Stops responding to Enjolras’ calls. He decides to commit instead to normality. Starts dating a girl from his school, goes by Isaac Chevrolet to fully sever any family connection.

It seems to work, for a while.

He finally gets the family he always dreamed of.

 

He’s out with some friends when it happens.

He runs home as fast as his feet will carry him, panting when he reaches the front door. He finds Marline, Betty’s sister, at the kitchen table and she’s crying. Isaac feels like he’s been shot.

The coroner report deems it a heart attack. Isaac just feels numb as Betty hugs him.

He asks to see his body.

Wants to be sure.

They won’t let him, so he screams and cries and punches the wall until his knuckles bleed instead.

He doesn’t leave his room for the first few days. Betty brings him trays of food, but they are left untouched. She doesn’t notice, in her zombie state. Together, they just exist for a while.

She tells him a few days before the funeral.

Of Don’s major debt.

Of the benefit cut after benefit cut.

Of how she’s selling the house and moving in with her sister.

Of how he has to go back to the home.

He screams at her, smashes her plates and just screams.

“You never wanted me anyway,” he tells her, “you’ll be glad that I’m gone.”

Then- “Don would’ve let me stay. He’d have done anything to let me stay.”

She tries to hug him, but he pushes her away.

 

Don’s funeral is much worse than his Abuela’s ever was. Jason, Betty and Don’s son, lends him a suit. It’s too big for him, so he rolls up the cuffs and steals one of Don’s belts. He looks like a kid drowning in his dad’s suit. He feels like he’s drowning.

Betty invites him to greet people. It feels weird, stood there with their other kids. He’s met them before, at parties and Christmas. Sammi hugs him close and tells him how much Don loved him. Jason ruffles his hair like he’s a dog. And Philip just smiles, all tight-lipped and straining.

He ducks out before the funeral starts and presses a cigarette to his lips. He stole them from Don, only two days after he died. Now seems like a better time than any to put them to use, he tells himself.

He ducks into the funeral halfway through and hovers at the back. His hands itch and his throat feels like its closing up so he loosens his tie.

He knows what Don would say. “Why are you all being so sombre? Cheer up lads. Have a drink.”

But Don’s dead. So he says nothing.

The service ends and everyone begins to move in one big pulsating crowd.

Isaac can see Betty, wiping at her face with a handkerchief, scanning the crowd for him.

Suddenly, Isaac can't stand it anymore. He knows what will happen. He’ll be shipped back to a home. There’ll be no more foster families, not now that he’s approaching 15. They’ll just be care homes and then job seeking and he’s never felt more trapped. If Betty catches up to him, he’ll have to go back.

So instead, he slips out the door.

He tears of his tie. Throws it in a bin.

And then he’s gone.

 

* * *

 

 

Isaac firmly believes he was made for the streets. Somehow, he just fits.

The feeling of freedom, the lack of rules and the abundance of outdoor space. He thrives on the streets, revels in it.

Its summer when he starts sleeping rough. The air is sticky and close, and he doesn’t need to bother with a sleeping bag. He quickly disposes of his suit, trades it instead for a ripped pair of jeans and a t-shirt he has to fold up at the bottom. He adopts his father’s last name again, simply going by Feuilly. It protects him, forms a barrier between him and everyone else with its power. At least, that’s what he tells himself. He’s glad to shed Isaac- even hearing it stings. It makes him think of Don, or Enjolras, or his Abuela. And it just hurts too much.

In the days, he focuses on collecting food. He begs, sometimes. Pickpockets when he has to. With some of the money he buys a pack of chalk crayons and takes to drawing on the sidewalk. It makes people smile, and helps him feed himself, so it must work. He gets himself a job part time, working in a food truck, squirreling the minimum pay away to put towards a flat.

Nights are the worse. The darkness wraps around the city like a cloak and there is really no escaping it. He normally misses closing time for the hostels so instead squats in doorways and watches the night pass by. The nights are loud, and scary, and constantly filled with the sounds of screaming and the glinting silver of a knife. One night he finds himself being woken up with his back hitting the concrete of a wall and knife pressed against his neck. The man takes his bag, his money, and leaves him shaking on the doorstep. Sometimes, he sleeps under the bridge just to the edge of town, where squatters gather together.

That’s where he meets Montparnasse. Montparnasse- he’s older than Feuilly, not by much, but enough to matter. He possesses a weird charm, a way of scamming people and making them smile at the same time. He’s not built for the streets like Feuilly, he's skinny and scrawny but he thrives. His hair is jet black and his skin icy at all times. His eyes narrow in on people easily, a constant sceptic.

He shakes Feuilly’s hand when they’re introduced. Doesn’t flinch at his name, just raises an eyebrow. He offers friendship to Feuilly like an olive branch. And Feuilly takes it.

They make a good team. Feuilly keeps working in the food truck, upping his hours whilst Montparnasse focuses his attention on petty crime. It seems to work, because soon they have a shitty little flat to call home. They can’t afford furniture, and the roof is caving in and its damp- but its home.

They celebrate Feuilly’s fifteenth birthday in November with a bottle of wine and takeout pizza.

They celebrate Christmas with leftovers and discount Christmas crackers.

In January they fall together. Become one. Montparnasse jokes it’s to stave off boredom. That stings Feuilly, who pores himself out into the other boy’s hands and lets him hold his soul.

In February the dream falls apart. Feuilly is fired from his job and comes home crying. Montparnasse holds him together, pressing kisses into his hair.

The next day they pack their lives back into their rucksacks and leave the flat. Adjusting to life on the streets is harder the second time. Winter means it gets darker earlier and there is almost no time to earn money. Their usual haunts, sleeping spots and soup kitchens, are rammed after Christmas so they resort to sleeping in the most vulnerable spots.

Its mid Febuary when Montparnasse is approached by them. He’s been gone all day and Feuilly is just clinging to the edge of consciousness when he shows up. He shakes him awake, eager and excited.

“Feu,” he whispers to a groggy Feuilly through the darkness, “we have to leave right now.”

The flat Montparnasse takes him to towers above them. They’re buzzed in and together they traipse up flight after flight of stairs. Montparnasse explains it all as they walk.

“They approached me while I was on the avenue, you know, where all the clubs are? Anyway, they said they could provide accommodation and food and shit in return for a few odd jobs. And it’s been really cold lately, that girl died just last week and I thought, if it gets us off the street then it’s worth a shot.”

Feuilly nods in silent, his stomach busy knotting itself together. No one offers free accommodation for a few odd jobs, he thinks silently.

He says nothing.

“Did you tell them about me?” he asks after they knock on the door.

Montparnasse just nudges him, “Of course I did.”

The apartment feels like the bedsit more than anything ever has. Feuilly has to stop to catch his breath.

It’s packed with people, the carpet threadbare and furniture sparse. There are people playing cards around a table, guns resting by their hands. There are several doorways, extending down into long corridors. The place must be massive.

Montparnasse grins and breathes out, “cool.” He squeezes Feuilly’s hand before a man is introducing himself and he’s dragged away.

There’s a kid, sat by one of the doorways. He can’t be more than three, chewing on his shirt.

Feuilly crouches down beside him, smiling softly, and whispering, “Hey there. You okay?”

The kid just stares back at him blankly until a woman picks him up.

They’re given their own room at the end of one of the corridor.

It’s got two single beds, a chest of drawers, a lamp and nothing else.

Montparnasse unpacks his rucksack.

Feuilly leaves his by the door.

Later, in the darkness, he hears Montparnasse whispering to him. “They just want me to work for now, Feu. Must be an age thing. they said once you’re sixteen you can start.”

Feuilly says nothing.

“They’re inducting me next week,” Montparnasse adds.

“That sounds like something a gang would do,” Feuilly bites back.

Montparnasse turns on the lamp next to their beds, propping himself up on his elbow. “And? I fucking know this is a gang Feuilly, I’m not stupid. Just because I didn’t get a fancy education like you.”

Feuilly pauses. Bites his lip. Montparnasse turns the light out.

After a while, Feuilly murmurs, “just be careful. I know what these people are like. And- I need you safe.”

 

They fall into a routine. Montparnasse helps them with their ‘odd jobs’. Feuilly keeps up their old lifestyle. He dreads coming back to the flat every night, dreads sitting in that room, dreads being around those people.

He strikes up a friendship with one of the wives, Florence. Helps her look after her baby when she’s too sore and bruised to do it herself. They make fun of him for that, call him slurs and insults. Montparnasse just laughs along with them.

Before they used to dream of escaping, moving to Paris and starting again. now all Montparnasse cares about is 'improving his rank'.

They don’t talk anymore, not of anything that matters. Montparnasse drinks and smokes and makes crude jokes, and that’s not who Feuilly loves. So he starts staying out late, working several jobs just to stay out of the flat. He hoards the money to himself, not letting Montparnasse know he’s even earning it. It’s his escape, his get out of jail free card.

One night Feuilly wakes to the sound of screaming. He sits in bed, clinging to his sheets, until Montparnasse comes in.

“Don’t worry,” he grunts, gesturing to the blood coating his pristinely pressed white shirt, “it’s not mine.”

And Feuilly hears them laughing, talking, most nights. Sometimes, he sits and listens, door slightly ajar.

“So what is he? Your bitch?” he hears one man laugh, followed by a snort.

Montparnasse just laughs, cool and pristine. “No, no, nothing like that. He’s more like my little brother. Just can’t seem to shake him.”

Another round of laughter.

“He’ll be sixteen next month. Then he can finally start pulling his weight.”

 

* * *

 

 

It’s a week before his sixteenth birthday that Feuilly boards a train to Paris with just his rucksack. Finally escaping the confines of that bedsit.


	2. Step Out and Face the Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "He’s clutching his own paper cup, and he gives a speech on fate of all things, and normally Feuilly would brush it all off. But he’s so sincere when he talks of how this was always meant to be. And really if this is where the universe was always pushing Feuilly here, he really doesn’t mind all that much."

Feuilly’s mamma used to tell him about Paris.

She had lived there, when she was only sixteen herself, and she used to wistfully whisper stories to him in the dark. Of drinking by the Seine, of dancing by the Notre Dame, of beautiful women and charming men and the dizziness of doing whatever she pleased.

He used to love hearing those stories, begged her to tell him more. But her eyes would blur with tears when she tried to speak of her little flat, or her best friend Marie, and she would tell him it was too painful to think about the past.

Paris had always been so beautifully unattainable to him. So far away, slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. Now that he’s here, it’s not like he imagined.

Its crowded, for a start. The baking heat of the summer makes the metro sweltering as bodies mingle and wind around each other. he hugs him backpack close and watches, eagle eyed, for pickpockets. But they seem to target only the rich, and foreign, so Feuilly is safe, because he is poor and he is home.

He ascends the steps and is hit by the brightness of the city. The buildings arch above the streets, beige and tan sitting against the sky like a postcard.

Feuilly makes his way to The Seine first. He finds himself a bottle of wine and sits, sipping it carefully, wiping at the chin with the back of his hand.

He watches the city, stretching out just for him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The first few years don’t exactly live up to his dream.

Housing in Paris is more expensive than he could ever imagine, and all the housing agents tell him the same thing: “Go home. You’ll be a priority in your home town.”

But Feuilly can’t. His home is here now, on the winding streets and by the river and in each apartment window. So he sleeps rough a little while longer. Homelessness isn’t a lonely thing in Paris. The streets are lined with people who mirror him. Some are old, their faces crusted and lined with fatigue. Some are as young as Feuilly, even younger, children running bare-footed over the cobbles.

Here, his name means nothing, but he still wears it like a badge. Not that anyone really asks.

There is one man, the missing teeth in his mouth like gaping holes, who tries to talk to him. Feuilly instead chooses the solitude.

He buys a fiddle from a market stall and learns to play. He gets on the metro, stands on the Champs-Élysées and plays to the hordes of tourists. Sometimes, he even picks at the strings just for himself, lets the melody hit his ears only.

A bar near the louvre hires him to collect glasses. He does so, every night without fail, hoarding the money to himself until it’s enough for a third of rent.

He finds a small flat, three metro journeys away from Paris, with five other people. A family, a man, two women, a child and a baby. Together they manage to get two bedrooms. Feuilly surrenders his and instead sleeps on the sofa.

Its only fair really. He picks up two other jobs, an orderly at the local hospital and a barista at a small haunt directly on the tourist path. The jobs get him up early and keep him out late and he has never felt more exhausted in his life. His bones ache, and he finds his eyes constantly rimmed with shadows.

For the first few years the only emotion he can feel besides tiredness is anger. It fuels him, fills him to brim. He is angry for himself. For Charlie and Meredith, the fast-growing family who moved from Poland to find themselves a future and find themselves stuck with Feuilly in a two-bed flat. He feels angry for Montparnasse, and he feels angry at himself for leaving him behind.

Sometimes, he feels angry for Don, who left too soon, and Betty, who got left behind.

Mostly though, he feels angry for his Mamma, who let herself be shaded grey just to keep him safe.

He feels so achingly angry for so long. He starts to stay out after his shifts, picking fights. Sometimes he wins, and he goes home silently feeling a sick sort of victory. Other times, he loses, and lets himself bleed by the edge of the Seine.

Its just after his nineteenth birthday when he lets the anger go. He’s on a bus when he sees the article, sticking out of a discarded newspaper just for him.

He cries for his father, his poor dead father, found dismembered in Portugal. Then, he wipes away his tears and gets of the bus, clutching the newspaper. He throws it in a bin, with his anger and his sadness. He finally lets it all go.

Charlie and Meredith move back to Poland. Feuilly hugs them goodbye, tells them he’s going to miss them. He’s going to miss their share of the rent money more.

He eats takeout on the floor. Watches the shitty teen movies they left behind. Drinks and toasts to everyone that’s left him, and everyone he’s left behind.

And then, without blinking, a year passes, and Feuilly celebrates his birthday alone, in the dark due to an unpaid electricity bill. He eats a cake that Eponine from work gave him.

He stumbles through the months after his birthday. Goes to work. Scrapes together enough to pay rent. Uses the rest to buy pot noodles and biscuits. Sleeps. Goes back to work.

 

* * *

 

 

Its march when Courfeyrac interrupts his routine.

The café where he works is right in the centre of the tourist attractions and because of this it is constantly overflowing with organised tours, stopping to have a drink and a toilet break.

Courfeyrac, is a tour-guide, and a very chatty one at that. He’s only been on the job three months and yet Feuilly already knows he’s training to be a lawyer, he used to live in Saint-Emilion, he’s dating a very attractive, very naïve, law student and that he really likes Feuilly.

Feuilly likes Courfeyrac too, he really does, he’s just a little full on.

On this particular day, Courfeyrac is moping at the bar, head in his hands.

“Why is rent so expensive? Why is adulting so expensive?” Courfeyrac whines.

Feuilly pats his arm sympathetically, scrubbing at a stubborn coffee stain. “Why don’t you get someone to flat-share with you?” he suggests helpfully.

“But who? All our friends already have roommates, or don’t need them. Why has everyone else got their lives figured out?”

Feuilly just shrugs, giving up on the stain.

That’s when Eponine happens.

Feuilly loves Eponine. He’s not sure the feeling is mutual.

“Feu, weren’t you saying you needed to find someone to room with?” she chimes in, winking to Feuilly. He returns it with daggers.

Courfeyrac perks up, lifting his head off the bar, “You were?”

“Well-” Feuilly starts.

Eponine cuts him off, “yes, he was. He’s desperate.”

Courfeyrac starts to physically vibrate in his seat like an excited puppy. “That’s great! We could be roomies!”

Feuilly winces, “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea, we don’t really know each other that well-”

“You know everything about me Feuilly. And I’ll find out more about you. It will be good bonding!”

So that’s how Feuilly finds himself lugging boxes of his belongings on the metro to Courfeyrac’s house.

Courfeyrac introduces him to his boyfriend, Marius. He’s awkward and gangly and Feuilly doesn’t know exactly what to say to him, so he just nods and smiles.

The awkwardness seems to melt pretty quickly. They help him unpack, Courfeyrac blasting One Direction from a tinny speaker and the three of them laughing about nothing and everything.

Feuilly learns that Courfeyrac is a godawful singer. He learns that the two of them have been together for six months, that they were roommates before they were boyfriends. He learns that Marius was gonna sleep on the streets before Courfeyrac reached out to him. Marius wouldn’t have lasted two minutes sleeping rough, Feuilly thinks to himself.

Later, he sits on the balcony to smoke. Marius sits with him, and for the first time since Don, he manages to sit in the silence comfortably.

 

* * *

 

 

Three days after moving in, It happens.

It’s a Friday and one of Feuilly’s rare days off. He’s sprawled himself out on the sofa and is rotating between playing Mario Kart and watching trash TV. Both Courfeyrac and Marius are out, at a lecture and working respectively.

Feuilly has just shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth when he hears the doorbells ring. He figures it’s a delivery and ignores it. the ringing is persistent.

He sighs, buzzes the person in and goes to find some trousers.

He’s got one leg on when there’s someone knocking at the door.

“One minute!” he shouts, pulling the other legs on and hobbling to the door. “Marius, I swear to god if you’ve forgotten your key again I will-” he yanks open the door and stops.

It’s not Marius. The man at the door is at least a foot taller than Feuilly and he’s typing away on his phone, blonde hair covering his eyes. He’s wrapped up in a scarf, too warm for April and he’s clutching a paper cup.

The man finally looks up.

And it clocks.

Enjolras.

Enjolras frowns at him, “You’re not Courfeyrac.”

Feuilly just stares back for a minute stunned. Enjolras just frowns more, brow furrowing in confusion.

Feuilly mentally scolds himself and blurts out, “No, no, Courfeyrac is at a lecture… I’m their roommate…”

Enjolras nods slowly. “Well, tell Courfeyrac I called for him. He’ll ring me back, or something-” then, he turns to leave.

And Feuilly can’t let him go, can’t let him out of his grip again, so he blurts out, “Enjolras, wait!”

He freezes. Turns around again. The frown is so deep it cracks his face in two. “How do you know my name?”

This isn’t how Feuilly dreamt it. He thought Enjolras would recognise him, but a lots changed. He’s got a scar across the bridge of his nose. His hair is darker, less strawberry blonde. He’s taller and stockier. And really, he was probably only a little segment of Enjolras’ life, a blip on his smooth timeline. To him, enjolras was so much more.

But he’s running out of time, so he clears his throat, “It’s me. Isaac. From- from the home?”

Realisation coats Enjolras’ face and suddenly there is a 6-foot man curled in his arms and he’s not crying but Feuilly is.

They talk all day. Enjolras tells him that he left the home two weeks later, moved back in with his father. Enrolled in a private school. Met Courfeyrac, met their other best friend Combeferre. Enrolled in university.

Feuilly trims the edges of his story, makes them gentler. He talks of Don and Betty, of Montparnasse. He doesn’t mention the death, the homelessness, the trip to Paris. The times he cried in a pit of wine and darkness and wondered if he’d ever crawl out.

They tell Courfeyrac and Marius when they get home. Courfeyrac embraces the both of them and squeezes out all the air. He insists they throw a reunion party.

Which is how Feuilly finds himself wearing a shitty party hat and holding a slice of cake.

He meets Combeferre, the third friend, and he shakes his hand and solemnly informs him, “Enjolras used to talk about you all the time.”

It’s probably a lie, but Feuilly appreciates it.

He meets Grantaire. He’s drinking from a flask and Feuilly is sure it’s not the same bubbly prosecco in his plastic flute. It feels like he’s looking in a fun house mirror and seeing himself long ago. So he talks to Grantaire, squeezes his arm and treats him gently.

Jehan proposes a toast and stands on the coffee table to do so. He’s clutching his own paper cup, and he gives a speech on fate of all things, and normally Feuilly would brush it all off. But he’s so sincere when he talks of how this was always meant to be. And really if this is where the universe was always pushing Feuilly here, he really doesn’t mind all that much.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s his fourth family, by far the biggest and the safest.

He enrols in night classes, under Enjolras and Combeferre’s suggestion. He starts to go out for lunch with Bossuet and Feuilly. He sets up Cosette, another survivor of the foster system, with his grumpy co-worker Eponine. He feels like his grooves fit perfectly here. Like they were always made to.

He thinks he sees Montparnasse. On the street corner by his work. Stood beneath his balcony. Hovering near Jehan’s flower stall. But he’s always gone after a second, leaving Feuilly feeling dizzy and unsure.

And then there’s Bahorel. The biggest and the toughest, the kindest and the gentlest. He shows up at Feuilly’s door one day, drags him to the local boxing club.

They start to scrap every Wednesday night. Then, they start to go out for dinner afterwards.

Feuilly tells Bahorel about the streets. About his parents. About Montparnasse, and Mama and Meredith and Charlie. Pure and unfiltered.

And when Bahorel asks him if he believes in soulmates, he says yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one really read the first chapter so this is definitely more of a fic for me then it is for anyone else!! Still, I enjoyed writing it and I hope the four people who read it enjoy it too!
> 
> Title chapter taken from The Next Storm by Frank Turner.

**Author's Note:**

> Would you believe me if I told you I wrote the first draft of this three years? It has had many rewrites and titles since then, but this is what we have ended up with!! I quite like it!!
> 
> There will be a second chapter, it is currently in the works.
> 
> Title of the fic taken from Paper Thin Hotel by Leonard Cohen.
> 
> Title of the chapter is Heal by Tom Odell!!


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